Contract research opportunities

Other opportunities

The department's commercial services unit, Micromon, offers a range of DNA, RNA and
Microbial technology services to the broader research community.
Micromon has also established nation-wide recognition for its
recombinant DNA techniques training course. The Leptospira Diagnostic …

Serology lab provides a diagnostic and specialist consulting service for human leptospirosis.

Research Activities

Christian
Doerig has diverse research interests. After leaving the world of
viruses behind in the ‘90s for the then neglected field of malaria research, he
has pioneered the study of
protein phosphorylation in Plasmodiumfalciparum, the most virulent malarial parasite, which kills one
million people each year predominantly in developing countries.

Christian
studies the molecular mechanisms that control the deadly asexual
replication and sexual differentiation of malarial parasites in human blood. He
is interested in a family of enzymes called protein kinases, which regulate
cellular growth and proliferation by modifying other proteins in a process
called phosphorylation.

“Together with our international collaborators, we have identified 36
kinases that are crucial for the parasite to proliferate in humans, and shown for
the first time that tyrosine phosphorylation occurs in the parasite on
regulatory sites of kinases,” he says.
Currently, Christian is working with pharmacologists and structural
biologists to develop specific inhibitors of these important malarial enzymes.
“As the malaria parasite quickly develops drug resistance,
we need a constant pipeline of new antimalarials with different modes of
action,” Christian says.
“Kinase inhibitors represent one approach.”

Aside from his malaria research, Christian has recently
obtained joint funding with Associate Professor Hans Netter, a virologist at
the Department of Microbiology, to study the involvement of human kinases
during infection with Hepatitis C virus, thereby re-connecting with his earlier
interest in viruses.

In addition to his own research activities, Christian is
leading the Department of Microbiology.